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Cleaning up Thunder Bluff
An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"
Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I was just threatening to yank the impromptu slashdot chat room after a (literally) 12 year old chatter was getting out of hand. You know, I remember being a young teenager with loads of "hacking" scripts. I *don't* remember being so annoying about them.
:P
On the other hand, it's always funny when they fall for the "Alt-F4 to kickban" trick.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Gabe said it best.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.
But Thunder Bluff is full of easy-going Tauren. I mean, I've had people moo at me rudely, but I wouldn't call them "racist junk-monkeys". I'm sick of people stereotyping Tauren! First it's "Tauren are stupid cows" and "Tauren aren't allowed in my house because they'll break the china". Now it's "Tauren are racists". When will it all end...
-William Brendel
If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.
Try Settlers of Catan or Uno on Live, i guess they are too boring for the teeners every game I have played so far has been civil and even pleasant.
It would be nice to play a game against my nephew (the only person I know with an unhacked 360) without having to worry about colorful metaphors. Yes I know its nothing he hasnt heard before and its probably more distubing to me than him, but for grown-ups live is almost unusable for 90% of the games out there.
While I hate censorship, I do wish Xbox Live had some sort of rating system for games with a reporting structure for violators. I think it would work, they could still allow free-for-all matchups that let the explicatives fly, just allow an easy way to designate gamers that dont want to hear it. Maybe an icon on the gamertag? It just looks like there should be some way to do it that allows freedom for both people who want to hear 12 year olds cuss and those that dont.
I think you mean Barrens General.
All too often, it's not quite enough. Ignore would be great if, to use WoW as an example, you could ignore an unlimited number of people AND have it ignore the account as a whole, not just the toon causing the problem. I care less about profanity than I do people spamming channels, but when I /ignore someone...I want them completely ignored.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I implore anyone who uses voicechat to use some kind of push-to-talk button. I don't want to hear you breathing. I don't want to hear you argue with your mom. I basically don't need to hear you unless you saying something you want me to hear.
I completely understand that people are offended by foul language, but I don't understand why. The only reason I see for people to take offense is that it's learned behavior- i.e. "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should."
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
The problem is a lack of real-world accountability.
If someone were to act in real life the way some of those idiots act online, they'd get punched in the face pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there's no way to punch someone in the face over the net.
"Just words"? Language is the core of human culture. Language affects emotion, if it didn't literature, poetry, song--these things would be pretty much pointless. If language can create positive emotions, why is it so hard to believe it can create negative ones?
Plus I love the English language. If you have to put profanity in every sentence, you're doing a lousy job of speaking it, and that annoys me. It's like watching someone drive a ferrari without knowing how to shift; it makes me wince.
Not really (its a TS/Vent issue - they don't implement it), but our solution is to just recommend using a push to talk key. Mouse Button 4 for me.
Mod point free since 2001
General rule: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Therefore: If 'poo' isn't offensive to you, and 'shit' is equivalent to 'poo', then 'shit' should not be offensive to you. There is no inherent property in words which makes them 'bad'. If there is a euphamism or generally accepted substitute for the 'bad word', then it is not really bad. Check your premise, 'offended' people.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Since we're using "Cleaning up Thunder Bluff" as the subject, I'll assume that most of this is directed at the text seen in World of Warcraft. Here are a couple of things you can do to prevent seeing things that might be offensive:
- Use the profanity filter. This will block out the most offensive words that you may come across in chat.
- Put them on your ignore list. I know that there's a limited number of people you can put on the ignore list, but if one person's irritating you enough, put them there.
- Leave general chat. You can always rejoin it at a later time.
- Finally, you can report someone that's being excessively rude and using slurs. Bans are usually temporary, but they can get the point across. Too many temporary bans will result in a permanent one.
Of course, these are the options that are present in WoW, I can only assume that other MMOs have similar steps. YMMV.
On behalf of the Taurahe people, I for one am highly offended at the implication that our peaceful, majestic city in the clouds needs cleaning up. Our Bluffwatchers are some of the most efficient custodians I have ever seen, and our program to recycle waste products into compost to aid in Arch Druid Runetotem's morrorwgrain research sets an example for capital cities across Azeroth.
/spit on all rogues, both Alliance and Horde, would be acceptable.
Despite our bovine nature, and its accompanying production of large piles of waste product, we boast of the cleanest cities on Azeroth or Outlands, free from the usual blight of urban sprawl, like the putrid sewers of Undercity, the molten magma "waste processing" of Ironforge, or the dumbasses in Stormwind who let a dragon take over the city just because she could shapeshift into a "hawt bb." Meanwhile, we have continued to maintain a healthy tourism industry, and, unlike our druidic friends in Darnassus, people actually go to Thunder Bluff on purpose, not just because their cat hit the mouse and they were trying to go to Winterspring to farm.
In summary, I expect a full apology to be delivered to Cairne by the end of the week. Reparations in the form of well chewed grass, some decent low level balance druid armor, or a free pass to
Celticow
(Azjol-Nerub)
Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...
I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.
It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.
So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.
In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.
What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.
You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Choose you servers more carefully.
For example, I play COD2 exclusively. I belong to a online gaming "clan" that hosts this game and a number of others (BF2, BF2142, UO). In support of these games, we maintain game servers, a Vent voice chat server, forums, and a public website. Our overall philosophy is to provide an environment for fun and cheat-free play. We do not allow in-game typed profanity or harassment of other players. As far as voice chat goes, we only allow profanity in our 16 and older Vent channels. All other channels are rated G. Also, regardless of what channel you are in, harassment (sexist, racial, or otherwise) is NEVER tolerated. How do we manage it? Mature RCONs and Vent channel admins...who are on most of the time and available via IM, email, and phone when necessary.
Are we unique? Not at all. There are many mature groups of players who have banded together to form such positive playing environments.
If you are stuck on a Blizzard server, my sympathies.
No, I'm saying Vent/TS don't do an especially good job at handling their VOX, so you should use push to talk (which they have and support).
Mod point free since 2001
My boyfriend only voicechats with people he knows in real life, but I have no doubt the same would be true if he chatted with strangers and I came on the mic.
I avoid contact with people in online games. If this means I miss out on quests, fine. I didn't get into gaming to meet people - I got into gaming to get away from them. I've seen the way my fifty-something mother gets hit on by idiotic 17-year-old boys on WoW, and I'm not interested in that. I just want to run around killing things and gathering items.
There seems to be a fundamental difference between players who use the game to escape from their life and those who use the game as their life. The latter are the ones who tend to be obnoxious.
"Do you want to be my enchantress?"
Um, no.
A Sherman can give you a very nice...edge.
This problem has been solved elsewhere. I used to spend a lot of time working in video production and in the theater; in 90% of theaters and studios, they use a headset intercom system made by ClearCom. It's a pretty simple "party line" (or sometimes 2 channel) system, where everybody has a headset and a belt pack, with a PTT switch. The PTT can also be locked on, if you need hands-free operation.
However, the designers realized that letting people lock on their mics could get pretty annoying in a hurry, for exactly the reasons you mentioned -- everybody else on the circuit doesn't need to hear you breathing, swallowing, talking to people not on the 'com, etc.
So they have a feature where the person at the master console can hit a button, and 'unlock' everyone's mics that are locked on. The way this is done is actually a pretty neat use of analog electronics, but it's not really relevant. The point is that the PTT-lock is a "soft lock" (the button doesn't lock down mechanically or anything), so it can be remotely unset. So that way if the person at the master console needs to break in, or just gets tired of hearing you breathe into your mic, they can just hit the button and shut you up (at least long enough to reach down and hit the button again).
Seems like this would be a good feature for video games that feature a team 'com, because essentially they're doing the same things as ClearComs in a production studio. You'd have a team leader, and they'd have the capability of unhooking people's stuck mics if they started yelling at their mom.
The only hardware change is that you have to have the PTT switch as a separate control line, rather than as part of the audio feed. (You have to have separate "headphone out," "mic in," and "PTT" lines, like most 2-way radios, rather than just "headphone" and "mic," with the PTT switch installed in the mic line.) This allows the mic keying to be done in the console, rather than in the headset -- which is really where it should be, even on a full-duplex connection. Also, it would let you actually use the PTT switch as more than just a switch for your own mic; you could set it up so that a quick double-tap of the PTT by the person in charge would unset other people's mics, and/or you could put the PTT switch any place you wanted, not just on your headset. (You could use it via a footswitch, or on your controller, or any other place you wanted.)
Anyway, 'teamspeak' and other systems are relatively new in the video game world, but the problems you're describing aren't new or very unique; they're all solved issues in other mediums, and hopefully someone in the video-game world will eventually take a look at some of those other systems and borrow the solutions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
1) As others mentioned, leave general chat. This should resolve close to 90% of the problems.
2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity.
3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears.
4) If people are being offensive, report it to the Moderators (or whatever your game calls them). I do not think an MMO exists where there are not moderators of some form. Most of them are willing to help and will resolve issues like this, if you present the issues in a calm and reasonable manner.
Now, you can almost forget everyone suddenly changing their ways, and unfortunately there isn't much you can do to force them to change. While people can be muted or temporarily banned, you will almost never get permanent removal unless you blatantly violent the EULA. Short of making threats or committing some sort of illegal act, they will probably return. The best you can do is limit exposure using the tools provided by the game. It is not the best solution, but if the people acting like total idiots find out they are without any friends and that no one wants to play with them, perhaps they will finally leave. (Though, that may also be wishful thinking.)
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
i believe this is utterly appropriate at this time.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
You are right.. You have freedom of speech to say anything you want... That doesn't mean you have the right to be heard.... That's the whole issue, isn't it? Just cause you gotta say it doesn't mean I gotta listen....
A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire (1694-1778)
2) Idiot B looks up the real name and address of Idiot A.
3) Idiot B drives to Idiot A's house and shoots him.
4) Jack Thompson threatens to ban all video games
5) Idiot C drives to Thompsons house and shoots him.
6) ???
7) Profit!
And no, before someone says it I do not condone the shooting of Jack Thompson...
Shooting would be too good for him. He should be disbarred and die a lonely broken man, although considering his mental state (I don't believe for a minute he's actually sane, whether he passed a psych test or not) he'd probably just retreat into Thompson land and sit gibbering in a corner... actually, that might explain a few things.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
America's Army still has the best solution. Their in-game implementation of the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. They just put griefers in a barred cell from which there is no escape, and keep them there for a while. There's nothing to do in the cell, except peer out the little barred window and watch the sun go down.
Very relevant sidenote is that Tseric just quit his community moderator position after two years at Blizzard. He apparently got tired of the extremely bad treatment he received on a day-to-day basis.
I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.
Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.
Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.
The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.
Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.
Actually no freedom of speech does not apply to game servers because they are the equivalent of private property, I'm a member of the gaming clan and we have a ZERO tolerance policy on racial terms and most profanity. if you use it your warned, the next time your kicked, and if you comeback and do it again your banned. we ban a lot of people but we gain even more because we run a clean server.
Things like Xbox live and Warcraft at least have ignore functions. It's not difficult to block out the assholes on those systems. Have you ever played Ultima Online? Now THERE'S a game for assholes. There was no limit. If you felt like it you could go through the wilderness naming all the animals 'so and so is a faggot'. Or if you went to Buccanears Den you were 100% likely to be killed by some roaming asshole. They used to crowd around the portal casting firewall spells so people would be killed as soon as they came through. Or if you were just standing around minding your own business somebody'd pick your pockets, then when you tried to complain some other asshole would come along and throw a fireball at you. I think that was probably the most organised group of assholes there ever was.
These days though nobody plays that game any more so Buccanears Den is quite safe. I imagine it'll take some time for Warcraft to make that sort of change.
I have nothing compelling to say
Because this was a family service, we had to try to police conduct in the general channel, and because we didn't have the staff to monitor it live 24/7, it fell to me to try to automate some of this. That actually worked fairly well. We had a very large dictionary of naughty words and phrases. When you said something, my filters basically looked for any of those things, and '*'ed them out. The filter ignored whitespace, and it also considered certain characters to be equivalent, so if you wrote 5h17, that would match 'shit', since it knew a 5 could take the place of an s, and so on. However, before filtering, it did a spell check on your text, and marked all the words that were spelled right and were not on the bad word list as safe. For example, if you said "wash it", it would not see the "sh it" as something bad.
This worked surprisingly well. It caught it when people tried tricks like inserting spaces to break up the bad words, but usually did not get false positives, because of the spell check protector stuff. Well, unless you were a lousy speller, but if a lousy speller got kicked off incorrectly for profanity, it still improved things. :-)
One other little trick it did. When it filtered out something in your message, it only did that on the message sent to other people. The copy that echoed back to your system was uncensored.
When you got caught, it would send you a message warning you to watch your language. If you ignored the warning, an admin bot would ban you for a period of time. Repeared bans would be for longer times.
One thing that disappointed me: no one ever tried to use Klingon profanity to get around the filters. I had that covered in the filters, and was hoping to see the reaction when the users discovered that.
You do NOT have the right to say whatever you want, whereever you want, espcially in someone elses home. OR in this case, on someone elses virtual worlds. It's there's they own it. It is not censorship, it is a rule. No one is making you play thr game, it'sd voluntary. In exchange for agreeing to play by the rules, and usually a fee, you can play.
"Would you like to be locked out of all games your favorite publisher makes for NOT using "profanity"?"
no, bur I wouldn't play, and I wouldn't tell them they can't do it. There house, their rules.
And before you do, don't go off the deep end and compar it to something else. This is a PRIVATE game we are talking about, keep it in context.
"You cannot have the right to express your opinions if you deny that right to others."
Yes tou can, as a matter of fact.
Go to a Casino and express you're opinion the a pit boss is an ass. You will be asked to leave, because they have the right to deny ANYBODY service. Just like the MMORPG you are playing.
""I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." "
Sure, when talking about the GOVERNMENT.
Here's an idea, next time your at someone's house trash talk until they throw you out. Then try to get a legal case against them for censorship. Good fucking luck
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Don't even bother reporting the spammers with spamsentry. Blizzard has already stated that they are overwhelmed by reports from that mod and their logging (apparently) isn't good enough to track the culprits - who usually fire off a barrage of spam and then delete the account.
/spamsentry options ignorebylevel 2
Better use of spamsentry is this:
That'll ignore tells from all players below level 2. I have yet to see a spambot bother to level up a character. They may start doing that at some point, but by then, Blizzard's patch with the in-house spam controls will be available.
Do you happen to have a reference for that? I wouldn't be suprised if their logging is that lackluster. Seems security is often an after-thought (and by then its really difficult to deal with).
Thanks for the tip! Reporting spam was sort of loosing its novelty value anyway.
"... give permission ..."
heh, that implies that they don't already have the ability to listen in on your tender "cyber" in a secluded room in stormwind
Do you happen to have a reference for that?
It was an employee posting on their forums but unfortunately I don't have a link. The post I'm remembering though, mentioned the problem being SpamSentry's queued-spam reporting. SpamSentry - by default, I think, queues up spams received and alerts you to them hourly. If you batch-report them to a GM at that point, the spammer is long-gone. That is: the character used to generate the spam has been deleted, so your report no longer helps Blizzard because apparently their logs don't correlate the character sending the spam-tells to the account name.
If you send a report the instant the spam is received, there's a chance that a GM will see it in time to do something about it. Based on their customer-service response time though, it seems unlikely.